


the queens' lovers' _unrequitedly devoted_ devotees club

by nonisland



Series: gazebo ’verse [3]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Female Friendship, Gen, Jealousy, Meta, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-01
Updated: 2010-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 06:49:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Elaine of Corbenic comes by sometimes, allegedly to sympathize with Elaine of Astolat: really to gloat.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	the queens' lovers' _unrequitedly devoted_ devotees club

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** mention of suicide, but in the extremely strange metaverse this takes place in I'm not sure whether it ever happened to this version of Elaine of Astolat, or even to a different one—Galahad might be misinterpreting the situation. Some hostile language directed against Elaine of Corbenic for her affair with Lancelot.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Should you find something, whilst reading one of my stories, that offends you/is incorrect/could offend others/is in any way problematic, please please _please_ do not hesitate to tell me. I will never spew hate at you, I will never attack you, and I will _always_ thank you for taking the time to let me know.

Elaine of Corbenic comes by sometimes, allegedly to sympathize with Elaine of Astolat: really to gloat.

If she meant it, she wouldn’t bring Galahad with her. He was as uncomfortable as Elaine of Astolat there, as defensive as Isolt, golden-haired and violet-eyed and beautiful as he stood in the corner and looked at Isolt with approving pity—somehow nobody ever told him about her one despairing, desperate lie—and Elaine of Astolat with something between pity and condemnation. Elaine feels it like fire on her skin and ice in her blood; Isolt tastes it like bile and nightshade—she wants no approval from Galahad the Pure, who damns everyone in the pristine sterility of his mind.

(Merlin said once that Galahad would have made an excellent Calvinist. The QLD Club weren’t quite sure what that meant, but they knew it _sounded_ harsh, the sharp “k” sound at the beginning and the hiss-click at the end. Once he’d explained, it all made perfect sense.)

“It’s so lovely to see you,” Elaine of Corbenic had said the first time she came, with Galahad all arms and legs and somehow graceful withal. “I hear this is the place for women who love men who love queens?”

“You needn’t make it sound so...” Elaine of Astolat said, mouth twisting unhappily. She refused to meet Galahad’s eyes, or even to look at him.

“Trashy?” Isolt offered. She clenched her fingers around the handle of the teapot. “This is a club for _unconsummated_ love of these men who love queens.” Elaine of Corbenic’s small smile flickered, and Isolt thought of the pain of sails white as benediction and the devouring hope in Tristan’s eyes as he looked _through_ her, thought of her own Elaine among the lilies with her face gentled by the awful balm of death, and pressed her words in to the hilt. “You are not eligible. Or welcome.” And twisted. “Lying harlot.”

Elaine of Corbenic stepped back, one hand closing around her son’s elbow. He stood very still, and she felt the tremor of conflict in him: mother, duty; fornicator, castigation. She tried not to touch him, whenever she could she tried not to touch him, because although he blamed his father for the most part, he could not see her as sinless. But he didn’t flinch away, and she was grateful for that, under the angry forge-fire of Isolt’s eyes—enough, maybe, even, to temper pale fragile Elaine of Astolat, Elaine the Fair.

The lily maid, the bride of death.

She said it aloud and didn’t mean to; the words dropped from her lips and fell on the flagstones of the gazebo like a gauntlet, and Isolt of the White Hands looked through her with a gaze that burned like the depths of winter, that pierced like a lance of moonlight, and dismissed her with that look as if she had never been.

It was the one Tristan had taught her, without ever meaning to—the one he had given her, day after day, week after week: _you are nothing, nobody, because you are not who I want you to be you are meaningless_ —the one that left her empty and heartbroken.

Elaine of Corbenic turned and left without another word; Galahad bowed, ever-so-slightly, more to Isolt than to the lily-maid of Astolat—a suicide did not deserve the grace of Heaven; why then should she receive his own respect?—and followed.

In the time following Elaine of Corbenic came back sometimes despite herself, despite Isolt’s protectiveness of her Elaine—a protectiveness she uses like a weapon when she wants, which she wields like a sword and cuts to wound rather than to cleanly kill. Or perhaps because of that, because even though Elaine of Astolat lost, Elaine of Corbenic sometimes thinks that she could be made something real and strong and whole.

It worked for her, after all.


End file.
